How big is your Mobile?

[VicParticipant @vic]

I just checked the storage on my mobile as I expect to be taking lots of pictures with it soon.
207GB free, that should be enough! It’s amazing really, my first desktop had a 500MB Quantum Fireball HD in it.

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi Vic, it will depend on how large your photos are, all my photos go to a 62GB SD card, which currently has nearly 400 photos of various sizes on it, but it has hardly made a dent in the storage space.

Regards Nick.

[Lee RogersParticipant @leerogers95060]

Mine is just the right size to fit into the hand made leather case that my old Blackberry went into.

The Blackberry was a genuine instrument, all modern mobiles are toys.

[Richard SimpsonParticipant @richardsimpson88330]

Phones are for talking into, cameras are for taking pictures.  🙂

 

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

Our first ‘desktop’ computer didn’t have any long term data storage – it just had 32kB of RAM and relied on external software storage!

[not done it yet]

On not done it yet Said:

Our first ‘desktop’ computer didn’t have any long term data storage – it just had 32kB of RAM and relied on external software storage!

Advances in computer technology make me feel old.  My first work computer, was an EMIDEC 1100.  Main memory was 1024 x 36bit words of core (approx 4kb), plus a 20k magnetic drum.  Lived in it’s own building and was “too expensive for most countries”.   Strangely I don’t remember any tape drives.  Might be because I spent most of my time inside its  “database” – 300,000 punched cards in a hut!

A month later I transferred to a new ICL1906A installation.  This was water-cooled ‘big iron’ in a purpose built building, with computer hall, tape library, offices for about 100 staff, kitchen, bogs and all the trimmings.  Had it’s own substation with four big motor generators and a huge diesel standby generator in a shed bigger than my house.  Left the EMIDEC completely in the dust:  196,000 24bit words, 2 line printers, about 10 tape drives, half a dozen 60Mb drives, each the size of a laundrette washing machine.  Replacing EDS60s with 200Mb drives was a 9 day wonder – visitors were bussed in to admire them.

Peripherals cost about as much as a house, and printer paper arrived by the ton.  Only 6 “visual display units” so most programs were hand punched on cards. Took about 10 minutes to process 100,000 records and was operated on a shift system.  Later computers soon made it obsolete.  Vic’s phone is more powerful than a 1980’s corporate mainframe, children can afford them, and they do all things informational!

The 1906A saved an enormous amount of money by implementing a stock control/management system.   Humans couldn’t do the calculations fast enough.  Statistical provisioning involves exponential smoothing applied in 4 or 5  different ways, and accuracy is greatly improved if all the data is available – recurring demand, shelf-life, obsolescence, and dependencies etc.  Lots of awkward sums, too much for nomographs and mechanical calculators.   A computer has no problem assembling all the data and crunching the numbers, and fewer staff are needed.

Stock control also reduces wastage – men went to gaol because I was able to identify when and where stock was going missing, allowing the police to sharply focus their enquiries.  The thieves never knew they’d been nailed by a bloke in an office analysing data. Since then I’ve been very wary of sharing personal data on the web. What I did in the 80’s was basic by modern standards.

A later development was ‘Just In Time’ provisioning, in which fast computers reduce the need for warehouses and warehousemen.  Rather than pay for storage purchases are timed so stock is only delivered when needed.

Forty years later these techniques, and more, are part of the basic package when industry set up new factories abroad.  National pride and racist notions are rendered irrelevant because it’s not necessary for the workforce to be highly skilled.  These days manufacturing has to continually modernise and innovate as necessary to deliver desirable and affordable products.  Anything less is commercial suicide…

Dave

[Richard Simpson]

On Richard Simpson Said:

Phones are for talking into, cameras are for taking pictures.  🙂

 

I take a 24mp Fuji MILC on holiday and the pictures are very good. On my last holiday though I also took quite a few with my iPhone. When I viewed them on my 55” TV at home you couldn’t tell which pictures were taken with which. Computational Photography on phones has come on a lot in recent years.

[TeVeParticipant @teve]

Apricot ? Had one with two external drives, no internal.

Had a game when the computer won it was writen all over the screen, I WON

When you won it was written with screens tinyest letter You won

[Richard Simpson]

On Richard Simpson Said:

Phones are for talking into, cameras are for taking pictures.  🙂

 

Hi, well I suppose you’ll only get a real photo with a camera that’s got a film in it.

Regards Nick.

[Nicholas Farr]

On Nicholas Farr Said:

On Richard Simpson Said:

Phones are for talking into, cameras are for taking pictures.  🙂

 

Hi, well I suppose you’ll only get a real photo with a camera that’s got a film in it.

Regards Nick.

I do know a photographer who thinks that!

[Robert Atkinson 2Participant @robertatkinson2]

By first computer had 256 bytes of RAM. First one recognisable as a computer one had 8kB. Did wonders with 32kB on a BBC B and that included the video RAM. First HDD ws a used 10MB that cost neary £300 and the controller was another £150….

My biggest mobile phone is a 10″ Samsung tablet that has a cellphone built in.

[Richard SimpsonParticipant @richardsimpson88330]

I did once read a number of years ago now that the average home laptop at the time had more computing power in it than the entire system of the first spacecraft to land on the moon.

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

<p style=”text-align: center;”>My first encounter with computers was via Fortran. You punched the program into cards and put them in a pigeonhole in the computer building, yes it occupied a whole building. Provided the air-conditioning hadn’t packed up overnight, the next day if you were lucky you got an A3 sheet of paper which just said ‘error’. No indication of where or what. Not surprisingly I stuck to my slide rule.</p>
The next encounter was via Telcomp, a time sharing thing using a teleprinter, not a monitor, but I actually managed to get some programs to run. Unfortunately the only storage for programs was punched tape, and I never did get the hang of that.

After that the BBC B was a revelation, and BBC basic wasn’t all that bad. I did my first valve gear simulation on one. The sums took so long I had it print ‘now go fof a cup of tea’ on the screen. You youngsters don’t know you’re born!

[Richard SimpsonParticipant @richardsimpson88330]

I remember mid way through my secondary school in the early 70s we had a maths exchange teacher.  He was American and much more savvy as regards upcoming technology.  We once had to write a code for a computer to perform a function.  I chose determining the square root of a number.  I remember finding the whole thing incredibly interesting as well as very challenging.  This was in the days when some of us were making calculators from kits!

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, well my first computer was a Dell, which the company I was working for were selling to employees along with a monitor, which cost me £15.00, this was in 1999, and it had windows 95 installed, it also came with a disc to solve any issues that could have arisen in the year 2000, but luckily it wasn’t needed. Now bearing in mind I had never used any computer in my life, I turn it on, watched it all load up, following all the prompts, then there was the desktop. I then thought, now what do I do? I played around clicking on things that didn’t really mean anything to me at all, but I did ask one or two people in the know at work, and with the aid of a book, I soon found my around the system, and from then on it was a learning curve for me, but I soon got to grips with it, and soon taught myself how to load programmes and save documents etc. It was all good fun, but I soon became aware that there wasn’t much memory space, and again with a little help from chaps at work, I was able to buy and install extra memory into the computer, and really became confident in it’s use, and there seemed to be no holding me back from then on, not that I clam to be a “Whiz Kid” or anything, but I believe I’m pretty good at using them now.

Regards Nick.

[Richard SimpsonParticipant @richardsimpson88330]

Who bought “Windows ’95 for Dummies?”!  I thought it was fantastic, mind you I was using Windows 3.1 at work at the time.

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi Richard, I didn’t get that one, but maybe this more appropriate one for me.

But who can remember or used these.

Regards Nick.

[GeorgineerParticipant @georgineer]

Been there, done most of that… including magnetic core storage and 8″ floppy discs

I can remember how excited we designers were when a memory chip became available which stored 256 BITS of data in a 14-pin dual-in-line package. It meant we no longer had to mess around building memory from individual logic gates.

George

P.S. My mobile is a 15-year-old ‘dumb’ phone running on G2. It does texts and phone calls – who needs more from a phone?

G.

[Richard SimpsonParticipant @richardsimpson88330]

With you there George.  Mine works on 3G and does nothing more than phone and text, and I don’t bother with text!  It cast me 60 quid and I top up my pay-as-you-go card when it needs it.

[Grindstone CowboyParticipant @grindstonecowboy]

I think I still have Win 95 for Dummies, along with Tips and Tricks for Tuning Win 95 (a slightly better book, but more advanced). And I used those floppy envelopes many times. Early experiences with PCs – more accurately Word Processors – included replacing the Centronics connectors on the motherboards for a number of college machines. Heavy-handed plugging and unplugging caused the pins to snap off, usually just below the 90 degree bend down to the board.

Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be!

Rob

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

3G is in the process of being switched off in the UK by the end of this year. If your phone can’t use 4G then 2G is likely to be available for a while yet but may not work quite as well.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/mobiles/the-3g-mobile-network-switch-off-what-you-need-to-know/

who needs more from a phone?

Well, we would have been lost in the backwoods of Nova Scotia a few years back without access to Google Maps on the phone! There were no signposts and all the roads looked the same.

My phone gives me access to email abroad or away from home when WiFi for my tablet or laptop is unavailable.

I don’t do any social media but find the phone incredibly useful as a mobile link to the internet when away from home, you can check all sorts of things such as whether places are open, local weather forecast and many other things. Also, it is becoming increasingly common for public car parks to require payment by phone, it shouldn’t be that way but it is.

It is also becoming difficult to avoid the need for a phone to verify who you are when making transactions, even from your home PC. If I am buying something online my bank will frequently insist on a verification code sent to my phone before approving the transaction. If I am using the NHS Health App to view my medical records I am periodically asked to confirm my identity by phone and you need a phone for verification when accessing your tax records. Whilst a lot of these verifications can take the form of a text, some require an email address which requires internet access.

The phone is also useful for checking for flight information and especially delays. A travel company we have used frequently uses the phone for any ongoing updates such as flight changes when we are abroad.

Last year I inadvertently left one of my key medications at home when travelling to a Greek island. (silly me, but I do have quite a few) I was able to use the phone to access my prescription on the UK NHS App and use this to get a supply from the nearest Greek pharmacy.

Despite continuing pressure from my bank I have refused to do online banking on the phone, I only use my PC for that.

So, to summarise, I do find my smartphone incredibly useful even though I only make use of a fraction of its capabilities. Of course you can get information and sort out problems when away from home without a phone but having that access on tap is a no brainer compared to the alternatives. Really, what’s not to like? It’s just a tool like anything else. In model engineering terms, why turn up a component in the chuck of an electric drill if you have a fully featured lathe available?

Colin

 

[Harry WilkesParticipant @harrywilkes58467]

Without going into boring detail my mobile saved my life !

H

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

As many here are of a certain age was anyone else a member of the ACC, and perhaps went to the first London Computer Fair in 1980 run by the Association of London Computer Clubs, prizegiving by Clive Sinclair? When PETs ruled I took along my 6800 based computer with 32bytes of ROM and 256 bytes of RAM, 8 switches for input, 8 LEDs for output.

[Colin Bishop]

On Colin Bishop Said:

Really, what’s not to like?

 

 

The cost, the manipulation of our lives and the intrusion into our privacy.

 

 

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

<p style=”text-align: left;”>Cheaper than a land line, well mine is</p>

[Author]

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